Graeff, E. 2025. “A Call for Civic-minded Technologists.” Presented at the SNF Agora Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, Mar 25.
Presentation
Abstract
Engineering’s “culture of disengagement” (Cech 2014) casts a long shadow on society. The anemic civic philosophy, preached by lauded tech heroes, pretends politics and power don’t apply to technology, that we can reduce most problems to technical challenges, and that meritocracy is justice. There are bright spots—individual, civic-minded technologists; the Tech Workers Coalition; the Public Interest Technology University Network, and the Tech Stewardship Program. But they are insufficient. To address the challenges of our contemporary society, democracy, and sociotechnical systems, we need to understand technology’s civic landscape, reframe the technical expert’s role in democracy, and cultivate engineers to be civic professionals.
Sheldrick, M, Graeff, E, Papa, M, & So, W. 2024. From Ideas to Impact: A Conversation with Michael Sheldrick, Co-founder, Global Citizen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, Oct 16.
Recording
Recording of panel about Michael Sheldrick’s book From Ideas to Impact. Erhardt Graeff’s comments at 34:48.
Graeff, E. 2024. “The Digital Good demands Civic-minded Technologists.” Presented at EASST-4S 2024: Making & Doing Transformations, Amsterdam, Netherlands, NY, Jul 17.
Presentation
Abstract
Engineering’s “culture of disengagement” (Cech 2014) casts a long shadow on society. The anemic civic philosophy, preached by lauded tech heroes, pretends politics and power don’t apply to technology, that we can reduce most problems to technical challenges, and that meritocracy is justice. There are bright spots—individual, civic-minded technologists; the Tech Workers Coalition; and the Integrity Institute, a community of practice for “trust and integrity” professionals from technology companies. But it’s insufficient. To solve the challenges of contemporary society and democracy, entwined with sociotechnical systems, we need to understand technology’s civic landscape and reframe the technical expert’s role in democracy.
Engineering has a rich history of political activism and rumination about its social and civic responsibility (Layton 1986; Wisniowski 2016). And STS has long tried to understand and define ethical technology. However, computing has grown more deprofessionalized over time, loosening its ethical tethers. Simultaneously, there are growing concerns about the role technologists play in society. So how should civic-mindedness intersect with the education and daily practice of technologists?
I’ve conducted 17 interviews with leading engineering educators, looked at the history of civic engagement and civic-mindedness in engineering and computing, and worked on defining civic professionalism in technology. My research supports an argument that technologists need a political education. Unfortunately, civic learning is scarce in most undergraduate programs and even secondary schools, and it’s particularly uncommon in computing. So we must define and invest in civic learning and a civic culture in computing, because the digital good really demands civic-minded technologists.
Graeff, E. 2023. “Educating Engineers for Civic-mindedness.” Presented at the 14th Symposium on Engineering and Liberal Education, Union College, Schenectady, NY, Sep 23.
Slides
Abstract
In her book Educating for Civic-mindedness, Carolin Kreber (2016) offers a compelling framework for civic-mindedness as an attribute and capability of professionals, which can be nurtured through “transformative higher education” experiences. This paper will apply Kreber’s framework to understanding the task of nurturing civic-minded engineering professionals, summarizing the existing landscape of transformative experiences in engineering education and diagnosing the challenges and possibilities for enhancing these efforts, as expressed in interviews with leading educators and practitioners of civically-engaged engineering.
Kreber starts with Bringle and Steinberg’s (2010) definition of civic-mindedness as “a person’s inclination or disposition to be knowledgeable of and involved in the community, and to have a commitment to act upon a sense of responsibility as a member of that community”; a civic-minded graduate is “a person who has completed a course of study […], and has the capacity and desire to work with others to achieve the common good.” Kreber emphasizes the “with others” portion of this definition, arguing that civic-minded professionals “support the flourishing, or authenticity, of other members of society, by helping others achieve important human capabilities.”
Cultivating authentic, civic-minded professionals should be a core purpose of higher education, according to Kreber. She believes this requires carefully designed, community-engaged learning experiences that have a “transformational” effect on students. Engineering education rarely achieves this high bar. Rather, engineering’s culture and its most common approaches to nurturing ethical and social responsibility appear in tension with certain civic virtues. A call to action for “civic professionalism” in engineering is due.
Graeff, Erhardt. 2023 (April 20). Using Civic Professionalism to Frame Ethical and Social Responsibility in Engineering. 2023 Forum on Philosophy, Engineering, & Technology (fPET 2023), TU Delft, Delft, The Netherlands. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p17wdt2GriQ.
In recent years, professional societies, scholars and educators, and corporations within the fields of engineering and computer science have been grasping for better principles and frameworks for the ethical and social responsibility that engineers, computer scientists, and technologists should embody. Many professional societies (e.g. NSPE, IEEE, ACM) have revised their codes of ethics. Scholars and educators have launched numerous research projects and educational experiments to determine the values and ethical competencies professionals should learn and apply. Corporations have publicized their ethical commitments and formed consortia to govern ethical approaches to research and development areas like artificial intelligence.
We know there are fundamental problems. In 2014, Erin Cech identified a “culture of disengagement” in engineering that weakens engineering students’ commitments to public welfare during their undergraduate years. She argued that ideologies of 1) depoliticization, 2) technical/social dualism, and 3) meritocracy were key pillars of engineering’s disengaged culture. These ideologies undermine engineers’ social responsibility by positioning technical expertise as supremely relevant and perceiving existing social, economic, and political structures as fair and just. In subsequent studies, Cech and co-authors call for engineering education and epistemologies of engineering that repoliticize the profession and its work. I believe civic professionalism answers that call.
Based on Harry Boyte’s concept of “citizen professionalism” and Albert Dzur’s concept of “democratic professionalism,” civic professionalism is both a professional identity, anchored by civic attitudes and related values, and a set of normative professional practices that rely on civic knowledge, skills, and habits, which augment specialized technical competencies. In contrast to typical outside experts, Boyte argues citizen professionals see their role as co-creators and facilitators of problem-solving. They acknowledge that they too are citizens alongside many other stakeholders and should share power over decisions. They acknowledge the limits of their knowledge and expertise in different contexts and embrace local knowledge. Their work serves the common good by solving technical problems while also building and strengthening relationships.
Similar to Boyte’s description, Dzur’s democratic professionals resist the technocratic urge to flatten complex problems into challenges well-suited to professional methods beyond the lay public’s reach, and instead create space for deliberation and collective action regarding social and political issues beyond the borders of their own professional domains. Dzur specifically offers democratic professionalism as a middle ground between a “social trustee” model of professional and its radical critique, which would seek to deprofessionalize expertise and recover all such power for the public. Dzur argues that professionals and laypeople both have a stake in professional decisions and should share oversight of professional ethics democratically.
This is where engineering and computer science should head—framing social and ethical responsibility in terms of a broader civic and democratic responsibility. Although civic professionalism does not have a monopoly on these tenets, which we can locate in other popular ethical engineering frameworks, it does provide a compelling emphasis on epistemic humility, politics, and the common good with clear pedagogical opportunities as this paper will show.